A Tankendo Robot that Defends Itself from Opponent Attacks by Moving Immediately before a Valid Strike or Thrust

Abstract

The final goal of this paper was to realize swordplay (Tankendo) matches between humans and robots. For a mobile trolley robot that cannot suddenly start and stop like a human, we devised a robot system design method that would allow a robot to defend against human attack by moving immediately before a valid attack. In the preliminary experiment, of the control parameters for the mobile trolley robot used, the authors changed the direction of movement and rotational elements to find the best conditions for a robot to avoid taking defensive action until the last possible second to avoid an attack. In this experiment, we calculated the threshold from the movement speed of the center of gravity of the body during striking and thrusting by a human and designed a system to determine the robot defense initiation time.